MADISON, WIS. – Chadwick M. Elgersma, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, together with Brad Schimel, First Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, announced that Stelio Kalkounos, 53, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was sentenced last week by Chief U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson, to 18 years in federal prison for receiving child sex abuse material (CSAM). Kalkounos pleaded guilty to this charge on May 13, 2026.
In 2022, Kalkounos met a 16-year-old girl online. In 2022 and 2023, Kalkounos met the girl at hotels in Racine County, in the Eastern District, and paid her to engage in sexual activity. In 2023, Kalkounos again went online and met another 16-year-old girl. Although the girl disclosed that she was a minor almost immediately after meeting him online, Kalkounos went on to solicit and pay for sexually explicit images and videos from her. Kalkounos progressed to meeting her at hotels in Madison, in the Western District, for commercial sex. This lasted for at least five months.
Calling Kalkounos’s crime “very disturbing,” Judge Peterson found Kalkounos pressured the survivors to perform sex acts they did not want to do and treated them cruelly. This had a devastating effect on the survivors, who were “not prepared” for the man they met on the internet, according to Judge Peterson.
In assessing Kalkounos’s danger to the community, Judge Peterson noted Kalkounos’s criminal history. In 2006, Kalkounos was convicted in the Eastern District of traveling across state lines for sex with what he believed was a 14-year-old girl but was actually an undercover officer. After serving a federal prison term for that offense, Kalkounos had a successful career in the restaurant industry and owned Five O’clock Steakhouse at the time of the offense. Without confidence that Kalkounos could be prevented from returning to similar crimes in the future, Judge Peterson found the lengthy term of imprisonment was warranted.
The charge against Kalkounos was the result of an investigation conducted by the FBI. The case was handled by Western District Assistant U.S. Attorneys Megan Stelljes and Julie Pfluger and Eastern District Assistant U.S. Attorney Abbey Marzick.
This investigation was a part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc .
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Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office — Eastern District of Wisconsin — U.S. Department of Justice press release.